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100
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APRIL 2016
nshoremag.com
BY JEANNE O'BRIEN COFFEY
Playwright
Anna Smulowitz
stimulates thoughtful
discussions among
young people
with her play,
Terezin: Children
of the Holocaust.
Bully
Pulpit
photographs by Rachael Kloss
When Anna Smulowitz was nine years
old, she promised herself she would
find a way to let the world know
what her family had lost in the Hol-
ocaust. Born in a displaced persons
camp to parents who had survived
Auschwitz and Buchenwald, young
Smulowitz had just learned from
her mother that her grandparents,
aunts, uncles, and cousins were all
killed by Nazi soldiers.
"I was so overwhelmed that I
promised to write something to let
[the Nazis] know what they had
taken away from me," Smulowitz
recalls. She eventually channeled
that innocent anger into writing
Terezin: Children of the Holocaust, a
play that has been resonating with
people of all ages and backgrounds
since she wrote it in 1970 as a
graduate student.
"[The play] grabs you and takes
you inside a nightmare that never
should have happened," says Marc
Clopton, who has directed the play
on several occasions. "Watching the
children be psychologically twisted
by circumstances reveals how twist-
ed the Nazi machinery was."
The play's humanity has given it
staying power through the dec-
ades. It has been experienced by
thousands of people, from seventh
Katherine Hall and
Ella Bernard are
actors in Terezin:
Children of
the Holocaust.
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